The perfect life, p.1
The Perfect Life, page 1
The Perfect Life
Amanda Traylor
Florence & Reynolds
To Thomas, my dashing real-life hero of a husband, for helping me bring this story to life without losing my mind and for inspiring all my villains and heroes alike.
I couldn’t do it without you.
Contents
Chapter 1
2. Three Weeks Earlier
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
13. Eight years ago
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Epilogue
Also by Amanda Traylor
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
My wrists were burning. The swelling panic wasn't helping the situation. I needed to calm down, to stop struggling against the metal confinement. I’ve never been entirely opposed to being handcuffed to a bed, but I admit this was not exactly what I had in mind. I tended to prefer my life was not in danger during the act.
Breathe, Violet. Just breathe and use that brain everyone says you have.
I fumbled with the handcuffs, trying to slide it over the top of the bedpost to no avail. I could try to slide my wrists through, but I didn’t think I could stomach the pain of my flesh ripping. Oh God, I was going to be sick. I frantically looked around the room for the keys. It knew it was futile. Only an idiot would have left the key in the room.
I breathed in and out—slow, steady inhales and exhales. Other than raw wrists, I wasn't in pain. I was alive. But I didn't know how long I would be. I said a silent prayer, struggling to remember how to pray. This wasn't how I wanted to die. I wanted just one more chance to make it all right.
God, I promise I can do better. I promise to atone.
My eyes darted across the room, forcing my brain to work. Think, think, think. Dammit, if only I had my phone. Then a thought struck me. My iPad! If I could get to it, I could make a Wi-Fi call. It would be in the desk drawer.
On the other side of the bedroom.
Dammit. Why couldn't I have put it on the bedside table? I chewed the fingernails on my free hand nervously as I thought through options.
I stood and tested my reach. I could barely make a dent into the room. The desk drawer beckoned me—blowing silent, teasing kisses from its location eight feet away.
I breathed, slowing the cadence of my thrumming heart. I eyed my wrist cuffed to the post. Assessed the King-Sized mattress. I had one last option. I could try to pull the bed.
With my free hand, I pulled the heavy bedding off to lighten the weight the best I could.
I screamed against the force as I tried dragging the massive bed across the room with all my strength. The wrist attached to the handcuff burned as the metal scraped into my flesh, but I bit down and pulled. I felt the metal slice through the tender skin like butter. Hot liquid pooled.
Nothing.
I stopped, took a deep breath, and summoned all the adrenaline I could. I summoned my fear, my rage, my desperation to live.
Chapter 2
Three Weeks Earlier
It all began over expensive champagne. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Maybe, in truth, it started long before. The slow decay of a perfect life like an intricate tapestry unraveling.
It’s quite a peculiar thing to gaze at yourself in the mirror and not recognize your reflection. Who was this person staring back through the looking glass? I had everything they told me I should want. A sumptuous five-thousand-square-feet home in the hottest Bay Area suburb with a sparkly Porsche SUV parked out front. Tiffany’s champagne flutes and a handsome husband climbing the San Francisco tech ladder.
I was listed as one of Bay Area Time 30-Under-30 this summer. My one million Instagram followers were thrilled.
Did I mention I was also climbing the tech ladder? Tech marketing, anyway. Girls like me always go into marketing.
But the thing was, I never wanted any of it. Five-thousand square feet in a sterilized suburb you hate is just a really big cage. So, on a chilly evening in early December, one month after my thirtieth birthday, I sat wondering how easy it would be to set it all on fire.
“Are you almost ready? How much longer is it going to take you?” Lewis called to me from the upstairs hallway.
I stared into my vintage dressing table mirror and took three breaths before answering my impatient husband—always the hurry-up-and-wait type. He’d rush me to get ready as though the house were burning then spend an additional thirty minutes ensuring everything was buttoned up and locked down before we left while I stood by the door in full regalia. My husband only operated on his timeline.
It was as though my skin fit as tightly as his tie.
“Almost done,” I called down.
“You were almost done fifteen minutes ago.” His tone was flat, unamused.
“Perfection takes time, my love,” I said as sweetly as I could manage. I’d given up on jumping to attention at his command. Violet Hale jumped for no one. Not anymore.
I swabbed on another coat of Dior mascara and lipstick—the bold shade of red for which Lewis held a particular distaste. Lewis is the kind of man intimidated by red lipstick, although he would never admit it.
There is nothing as time-consuming as effortlessness.
I finished up and met Lewis in the foyer. He was wearing the charcoal suit I’d gotten him for his birthday last year. He even had on the engraved cufflinks I’d given him right after he’d made Senior Director at Cloud Tech—The Number One place to work in the Bay Area, according to Forbes.
Sr. Director, not VP. It was a tender subject in our household.
“You look quite nice,” Lewis said.
Nice. I smiled at the thin compliment, knowing it was the best I was ever going to get from Lewis. It had been so long since I'd heard a heartfelt compliment, I'm not sure I would even recognize one. I don't think he was deliberately being callous, but lately every time he offered any kind words, it felt like he had haphazardly jotted them down five minutes previously and recited them once or twice in the mirror. He said he's just not naturally good at giving compliments. We'd been together for ten years, and I knew better. When compliments start to feel forced, it's because deep down you don't actually mean them.
Sometimes, I wondered if I'd rather him just not say anything at all. I got enough platitudes at work and online.
Nonetheless, I forced my red lips into a smile.
"Thank you. As do you. I hope we’re not overdressed," I said, not entirely in earnest, knowing I didn't care whether we were or weren’t. If there was one thing I consistently held over the It Crowd of Almond Hill, it was a superior wardrobe. The women attempted to be glamorous but often just came off as flashy—bourgeois labels would abound on the women while the men would be in the form of awkwardly thrown together grown-up version of Alpha Sigma winter formal. Money does not buy class. It's something you were either born with or, as in my case, studied with Shinto discipline.
Lewis and I drove mostly in silence through the quaint streets of Almond Hill—The place to be when you were sick of the San Francisco rat race. Seven-figure McMansions with stately oak trees lined pristine streets while underground garages housed the latest Tesla. The Hill wasn't your average suburb—oh no. We were a wealthy hipster paradise. Cosmopolitan with a modern art museum and a theater house that showed Les Mis and Shen Yun last year. We had more craft cocktail bars per capita than any town had a right to. Why deal with transients urinating on the BART when you could still have all the best parts of the city, but surrounded by clean, rich, white people?
Um, Jennifer Moon is Chinese, don’t be so dramatic, I could hear my best friend Annabelle saying. A limousine liberal and sugar at the core, Annabelle really is both adorable and infuriatingly oblivious at times. Jennifer Moon is only half Chinese, after all.
I didn’t blame Annabelle. I wished I could be mildly oblivious, too. There were days I wished I didn’t care so much about the world outside of Almond Hill and the political fundraisers we only half-assed believed in.
At the end of the day, my bitterness stemmed from my heart-aching longing for San Francisco. While I enjoyed the quiet serenity of our little cul-de-sac, safe from the terror lurking at our door, I missed the eclectic diversity of city life. I missed tongue-burning Thai takeout and PRIDE and lazy Sundays in Dolores Park watching every shade of humanity express themselves. The not knowing who might sit next to you at the coffee shop. The fashion from around the wo rld from Saris to Goth. The pulse of a city with a soul. Thirty miles over the hill felt like the other side of the world to the life I once knew.
Lewis's boss, Jameson, lived in the thirty-eighth-floor penthouse suite of one of the swanky, new luxury condos on the east side of town, on the top of Almond Hill with sweeping views of Mt. Diablo to one side and the San Francisco Bay on the other. For only two-point-two million, you can have one too. You can even pick out your own custom finishings to set you apart from your neighbors—Western Turtle with the Almond backsplash or Mountain Sky with accented Summer Lake?
Lewis held a particular disdain for his boss, but Cloud Tech was a social group where everyone from C-Suite down to admins did happy hour together. When Jameson Chase, SVP of Business Development, had a Christmas party, you didn't decline the invitation.
We stepped out of the Range Rover and handed the keys to the valet in front of Jameson’s building. The concierge cordially greeted us and buzzed us up to the penthouse floor, which exclusively housed only two, two-story residences. Hired help greeted us at the door, and the sounds of crooning Christmas classics and the scents of the season—cinnamon and mulled wine, artificial pinecones—all but assaulted our senses. An elaborate tree dominated the living room, glittering with hand-blown glass ornaments. A classic artisan toy train circled its base, carefully circumventing shop-window presents with signature Neiman’s gift wrap. I had a sneaking suspicion they were empty. Jameson Chase did not seem like the gift-wrapping type.
A young woman was making the rounds with a tray of champagne tinged an expensive shade of rose gold. I helped myself to one without hesitation and did my best not to drain the glass instantly, keeping my promise to myself that I would maintain composure this evening. I would not give my rising domestic disputes reason to surface publicly.
I clinked glasses with Lewis and sipped—the palate dry and smoky indicative of fine French sparkling. I observed the rustic modern fixtures, the west facing floor-to-ceiling windows, and the rich, dark leather furniture. My husband’s boss was thoroughly a man of taste.
I spotted a gaggle of young women from our office in the corner, arm-in-arm and fussing over something or somebody. Probably a video of somebody's pet Chihuahua doing backflips. They were all slightly varying clones of one another in bandage dresses clinging to waifish frames, proper bras hoisting their small breasts for display. Sparkling stilettos in various shades of seasonal ornament—champagne, silver, and ruby—drew attention to their perfectly tanned legs, defiant of December. Completing their accouterments, honey highlights suggested they had all just stepped fresh from the beach and not the fog-covered den of the East Bay. Nobody in our hamlet had a natural tan. We got about as much sun as Ireland.
I sipped my champagne and tried not to let it bother me. Cloud Tech—a booming Fortune 50 in the heart of the Bay Area’s tech world—had a terrible habit of hiring eye candy to keep their “real talent” (i.e., the men in development) happy to sit at their desks for eighty hours a week.
I spotted Annabelle in the corner and bee-lined toward her, offering Lewis a mumbled catch you later. Lewis wouldn’t mind. He would be happy to be free to discuss sport ball with Annabelle’s husband all night without my oppressive judgmental gaze, as he put it. Is it so wrong I found football painfully barbaric?
“Violet!” Annabelle threw up her arms when she saw me approaching. I embraced her lightly as not to muss either of our perfectly curled hair or artfully shellacked foundation.
"You look nice," Annabelle said. Annabelle is about as good at giving compliments as Lewis. I think, with Annabelle, a more earnest compliment was on the tip of her tongue, but even with her own California dream girl good-looks, she had a difficult time acknowledging any other woman's aesthetics. It was as though it was an admission of one's own shortcomings.
"Thank you," I said. I gave her once over. Her muted silver dress and sheer black tights hugged her compact curves, and her pointy black pumps assisted in her vertical challenge. She held a flashy gold-studded Louis Vuitton clutch under her arm.
"You look great. That dress is flattering on you. I love the way you did your hair tonight." I offered the compliments as a counter to her thin praise. Women are easily bought with praise. I don't know why more people don't realize this and use it to their advantage. Especially other women.
Annabelle tilted her hips and smiled to acknowledge the compliment.
“So glad you came. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through this thing alone,” I said.
“Oh, c’mon, don’t be so dramatic. Could be worse ways to spend an office holiday party. You know this champagne runs eighty dollars a bottle retail.” She wiggled her eyebrows, making me laugh. Annabelle could coax a smile from Scotland Yard.
“We certainly pay him enough. I’m sure he can afford it,” I said.
“In that case, can you please give Adam a raise?” Annabelle said.
“If only I were your charming husband’s manager, it’d be in the bag, dawlin’.”
"I saw Kate is here," Annabelle said, offering the words like fishing bait. Leave it to her to jump right into the gossip. Especially when it was gossip at my expense.
“Mmm,” I said.
I flicked my eyes to Kate Gillis who stood in a gaggle of other entry-level women. She worked a tight green dress that cinched around her curvy middle and pushed up her ample breasts over the strapless bodice. Her blonde hair was up in a bouffant updo I'm sure she YouTubed for hours. Smokey eye, dangly earrings, platform pumps—it all radiated a certain cheapness. Twenty-four-years-old and hadn’t quite grasped the concept that more cleavage didn’t equal expensive.
I imagined Kate vacationed at all-inclusive Cancun resorts—the kind with cheap tequila taps in the hotel rooms. She sat at the swim-up pool bar and drank frozen strawberry margaritas while a popular remixed rap song played as the soundtrack to her own music video.
I hated what Kate aroused in me. I didn't want to be catty. I wanted to lift other women up. But some women insisted on making you their enemy.
"I assumed she’d be here. No one in the office was going to miss the chance at a party at the mysterious Jameson Chase’s house.”
Annabelle twisted her pink mouth. “She gets under my skin. Even if the man types can’t get enough.”
“Some more than others," I muttered, watching Lewis from the corner of my eye.
Annabelle followed my gaze to where my husband was fawning all over the young project coordinator, or whatever bullshit title Cloud Tech gave to girls like Kate.
I could confront it. I could take a stand. And maybe if I cared more, I would. But how did the first female VP Cloud Tech has ever seen concede losses to the office bicycle? If Lewis was fucking her, I didn't know if my pride could handle the scandal. Everyone in our circle would know. Everyone at work would know. Everyone in the industry would know. And then I would be that woman. Still young and vibrant with a tight ass, flat stomach, and perky natural tits, and my husband is still shopping at the dollar store.
Well, maybe if she wasn’t so work obsessed all the time, she could keep her home life intact, my mother-in-law’s voice resonated.
"We’re being dramatic," I said. "There's nothing going on there. People are spiteful and like to spread rumors. And Lewis just likes the attention. As if he were special. As though she doesn’t sprinkle her attentions like fairy dust on anyone who’ll bat an eye at her."
